Palestinians in Los Angeles reflect on the Nakba 78 years later

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:02]This week marks 78 years since the Palestinian Nakba, >> [music] >> where over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced and over 800 Palestinian villages were destroyed.

[00:00:12]>> [music] >> For Palestinians across the diaspora, the grief of dispossession is not distant. It is ongoing, inherited, and deeply intertwined [music] with the genocide in Gaza.

[00:00:23]I'm from Well, my family's originally from Gaza.

[00:00:27]>> My name is Sarah Alamie and I'm from Chicago. My father was born in Palestine. As a Palestinian living in the diaspora, >> [music] >> what does the Nakba mean to you and how has that meaning changed over the years?

[00:00:39]>> Nakba to me is really the time when our lives and our existence became contested. It's when we lost the ability to live freely.

[00:00:47]>> The Nakba is more like a a feeling. It's hard for me to explain it in words.

[00:00:51][music] The meaning of it is catastrophe, but for me it's a tragedy. It's an ongoing tragedy >> [music] >> that has been a part of our lives well since I was born and a part of my my father's life since he was 5 years old because he survived the Nakba. He was born in Palestine in 1944. Most of his family still lives there. What sort of, you know, stories or traditions were passed down to you from Palestine? My favorite >> [music] >> was the rolling of the grape leaves.

[00:01:16]What the leaves are my favorite food and yeah, every time we would just gather together. You know, anyone who knows [music] Palestinian culture, you know that it's all about food >> [music] >> and laughter and dancing. Everything from beautiful stories from my father being on the beach in Gaza doing backflips, you know, with his buddies on, you know, by the ocean and when the Nakba happened and they came through their village in Yafa demanding on megaphones, on tanks, that they leave their homes. [music] Has the Nakba ended for Palestinians?

[00:01:52]>> Until our homes are restored, until our stolen real estate and our beachfront bungalows and our [music] village villas and our vineyards and our farmlands until all of that is not no longer in the hands that [music] forcibly seized it then of course the catastrophe continues. We see people like Hand Rajab and so many others [music] who have been martyred. They are the faces of Palestine and they will free Palestine.

[00:02:24]None of their deaths are in vain. None of them.

[00:02:28]>> [music]